Glancing over my shoulder, I realized two grim-looking trolls had appeared out of nowhere. They both wore matching daggers and paced behind like tigers, graceful, their eyes never leaving me. The gaunt elf from the back of the carriage followed them, and his eyes never seemed to drift far from the queen.
The Queen wove her way through my house, the elves opening doors before her, finally making her way to the swimming pool. She glided across the patio and made her way to a lounge chair. The lounge chair, where I’d woken up in red panties all those years ago. Where I’d awakened to Wendy’s newspaper messages.
The Queen slowly ran a finger over the frame and down the armrest, as if she were picking out memories like threads from an old quilt.
Turning slowly, she cast her gaze upon me, and for just a moment I thought I saw a fraction of a smile, a glint in her eye. What was left of Stella Davincourt, tucked away someplace deep inside the Queen, remembered my performance with the blonde all those years ago. And it amused her.
Another layer of the fuzz peeled away from my mind, and I think it was in that moment I understood how my life traced back to that night, that party.
The Queen realized it too.
The glint in her eye disappeared as quickly as it had manifested, like a mirror glinting in darkness. She motioned to the chair.
“Come. Sit,” she said.
Without a word, I did as commanded … and it was a command.
“So,” she began, clasping her hands before her in a most Queenly fashion, “We understand you want to make a movie.”
“Yes, Stell—” I began, but her eyebrow shot up, halting her name in my throat. “Yes, Your Majesty,” I corrected.
“We understand that you would like to borrow a sum of money to make this movie.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“We also understand that you want to make this movie about Our deceased husband, the good King.” For the first time, the Queen smiled. It was a rictus, devoid of happiness and even life. There was emotion, to be sure, but I could only liken it to hatred or disgust.
The last layer of fuzz peeled back from my mind, the last remnants of PD-induced stupidity burned away. Clarity hit me like a diamond sledgehammer striking an anvil. I’d never heard such weight and meaning so deliberately applied to a single word. When she said ‘good’ there was so much she wasn’t saying … about the difference between good and evil … between the King and herself.
For the first time in my life, I was terrified.
I swallowed hard, and she seemed to delight in the fear that filled my eyes. She smiled once again.
“Yes, Your Majesty,” I replied, nodding slowly.
The smile disappeared and seconds drew out until I nervously shifted in my seat.
“We approve of this endeavor,” she stated simply and with a finality that set it all in stone. She motioned to the gaunt elf, and he trotted up, producing a thick stack of bound parchment. Her eyes were stern as she stared down at me. “You will use this script, and you will follow it to the letter.” The elf dropped it in my lap. She continued, “I cannot be bothered with such trivial things, but this movie will help correct some of the … misapprehensions … the people have about Us and the unfortunate demise of the King … and his previous Queen. With you at the helm, they will have no choice but to accept it.” She looked at the doors to the house. “Guards!” she shouted. Four trolls kicked the doors open and marched onto the patio hefting a large, wooden chest. They dropped it with a thud and one of them flung open the lid.
My eyes went wide. “Good grief!” I shouted. It was full of gold.
“Here is your budget, Cornelius,” she said. She sounded magnanimous, almost kind, but beneath it all was a venom that I’d never understood until that day. “Treat it with care. Your life depends upon this film. Make no mistakes.” She hesitated, looking down at me. Her eyebrow rose slowly, and I realized I was expected to say something.
“Yes, Your Majesty. I will do as you command.” My mind was racing. I felt like a rat in a trap.
She nodded slowly, and the eyebrow lowered back to its grim position. “If you succeed, perhaps We will see about correcting your current financial situation.” She turned and began walking towards the doors. With a swishing of lace, she spun back and glared at me. Her pale finger rose and pointed at me, piercing me where I stood. “If you fail, you, your dear wife and your darling daughters will all make amends in whatever manner that suits Us. Do I make myself clear, Cornelius?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
I was committed.
In a flash, I realized I had been committed from that first snort of PD at that first party. All the pieces fell together at once. She’d been planning her rise to power from the first moment she set her hooks in the King. The other PD dealers, they hadn’t left, they’d been removed. Stella had been responsible for the Queen’s death and the King’s. She’d been marching her plan along year after year, body after body, all paid for with PD money … my money.
And with my movie idea, I’d given her a perfect way to placate the people. I’d been part of the story, on the sidelines watching it all happen. I didn’t need to read her script to know it was a pack of lies. I’m sure it would make her out like a hero. And once the movie was released, I’d be a liability. I’d know how much of a lie it really was. My life wouldn’t be worth the paper on a death certificate, and at that point, neither would Wendy’s or the girls.
I had one shot, and if I failed, they would bury Wendy and my daughters in the same shallow grave as me.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I became a movie producer that afternoon and spent the next week contacting everyone I would need to make one last blockbuster. I reached out to anyone who had been involved in Hoffur. At first none of them were interested, but when I dangled bags of gold in their faces, they changed their tunes, even the Director. A few had asked about whether the Queen approved of what I was doing. They were scared, scared of crossing a tyrant, scared of disappearing. I gave them the truth, or at least part of it—the Queen had already endorsed the script. I even showed the script to them, bound with the royal seal.
I was off and running.
My PD usage leveled off, but it didn’t go away. It couldn’t. I needed to keep an edge, just a hint of godhood in my own mind to pull it all off, and I couldn’t afford a breakdown. I took the stuff like clockwork, every six hours, just the right amount. At the rate I was consuming it, that last delivery, my only stash, would last quite a while.
The parties, however, came to an end.
I set aside two bags of gold and then threw the Queen’s money around like candy at a parade. I had a crew, a director, actors … everything I needed. We started production in record time and hit it full steam with a vengeance.
I must admit, I was surprised that the Queen’s people didn’t check in on me more often. The gaunt elf showed up from time to time, making sure everything was going as planned. He even watched some of the dailies to ensure that the script was what they expected. But his appearances were few and far between. I suppose the Queen figured I was too hooked on PD, too scared of poverty and too terrified of her to run a double-cross. Or maybe she had bigger fish to fry. I didn’t care.
I had a mission.
I hired a marketing firm to litter the city with advertisements. We billed it as The King: The Truth. It took us six months to finish production, and when the movie was in the can, we sent a copy up to the Palace for approval. I received a reply from the Queen that same afternoon. The message simply read, “We approve.”
I scheduled the premier and sent invitations to everyone in the movie industry. I had the marketing firm advertise that there would be snippets of the film running in every theater in the kingdom.
On the morning of the premier, I got up bright and early and put together the best costume of my career. It was a variation of King Hoffer in his golden years, the schtupping years, taken fro
m what I remembered of my first movie. It seemed appropriate. The clothing was plainer than a King would wear, but there was no doubt that I looked like a grizzled, stooped, old man.
I’d done everything I could to make sure that the entire kingdom would be in front of a silver screen that day. And it worked.
On the morning of the premier, the streets were mostly empty. I know, because I snuck out of my house, made my way to the zeppelin terminal and left town.
I’d chartered an express zeppelin bound for Wendy’s hometown, and when I touched down I bought a fast steam carriage, paying in gold. No names were exchanged. Like a whirlwind, I’d kicked in her mother’s door, gathered up my family, and with the simple phrase “We have to leave,” we packed their bags and rushed out.
Wendy never said a word.
She heard the urgency in my voice, saw the fear in my eyes. I have no doubt she knew or at least suspected what was going on. She still trusted me, after all those years of failure.
I drove further and further north. The silence inside the steam carriage was oppressive, but I thanked the heavens for it. I didn’t want to explain it all to them. Couldn’t.
We crossed one border and then another. Darkness settled in, and I found myself wondering how the premier had gone, what the Queen was doing to find me.
It was after midnight when I finally pulled into a zeppelin terminal with flights bound for distant lands. I gathered them up and we picked a spot in the terminal where we were out of sight. Keeping only a handful for myself, I gave Wendy both bags of gold and told her to buy tickets for herself and our daughters, told her to get as far away from me as possible. The girls were tucked away in a corner, fast asleep, and I watched over them as Wendy got the tickets. When she returned, she finally looked at me, the obvious question clear in her eyes.
I grasped her shoulders gently, feeling an ocean of emotions welling up inside.
“This is the way it’s got to be, Wendy. My life for you and the kids.” I squeezed. “You’ve got to stay safe, anyplace the Queen can’t reach you. Hide. Change your names. Forget you ever knew me. If she gets her hands on you …” my voice trailed off and I shook my head, trying not to think what the Queen would do to them. “If they get you, my entire life will have been in vain. Getting you out of here is the only thing that can save me.” Tears slid down my cheeks and into my beard. “I’m so sorry, Wendy.”
She grasped my hand, tenderly, forgiving. She took in a breath to speak.
“Don’t,” I said. “You can never forgive me for this, for what I did to your life … to theirs. Ever.” I looked at our daughters, sleeping peacefully. I’d never felt so much guilt in my life. “I took what was perfect and dropped it into a meat grinder.” I gripped her hand tightly, staring fiercely into her eyes. “Promise you’ll never, ever forgive me for this.”
“I …” she hesitated.
“Promise!” I almost shouted, and my tears were rivers.
“I promise, Cornelius.”
I nodded once, and with that I walked away.
I take two blasts from my sniffer. It’s empty. At last. I close my eyes as the PD works its fire through my body. I smile, feeling like a god, knowing it’s for the last time.
“That was four months ago,” I say, looking at the six faces staring down the bar at me. I trace another W in the whiskey. “I’ve been on the run since then. Living in dive bars and back alleys. Every now and again, I would let someone recognize me. I left a trail of sightings in my wake, figuring that if the Queen was hot on my trail, she wouldn’t be as interested in finding Wendy or the kids.”
“So, how’d they find you?” the grouchy one asks. “Seems to me you could have stayed ahead of them forever.” He looks over his shoulder at the trolls and realizes they haven’t taken their eyes off me this entire time. His voice has softened a bit. Not out of sympathy, though. We all know I don’t deserve a shred of it. It’s more out of pity. Pity for a wreck of a dwarf who had everything and pissed it away.
“They didn’t,” I reply with a grin.
“Then how—” Grouchy starts.
Through a laugh I say, “I told them where I’d be.”
Six mouths drop open.
“But—” the MD starts.
“I’m tired, boys.” I let out a long sigh, and it turns into another coughing fit. “I sent one last copturier to the Queen. Yesterday. I was even rude about it. I told her she was the dirtiest whore to ever grace the surface of the earth.” Grouchy laughs at that one, and there’s a glint in his eye, like I’ve earned just the tiniest bit of respect. “I’m done running,” I add.
“They’re going to kill you,” the MD says, he sounds confused, and he’s got genuine concern in his voice. I don’t deserve it, but I’m grateful.
“That’s the plan,” I say quietly, more to myself than to any of them. My whiskey glass has been filled again. I turn slowly, toast the two trolls and wink at them. One of them lurches up, but the other reaches out his clockwork gauntlet, holding his partner in place. I toss the whiskey back and slam the glass down. It’s the sound of finality, a crack of doom long overdue.
I stand, pull my tattered coat off the stool and shrug skinny shoulders into it.
“What are you doing?” one of them asks.
I reach into my jacket and pull out a pouch with my last fifty in coin. I toss it on the bar with a jingle. I toss the sniffer after it, and the thing lands on the pouch with a single clink of metal on metal. I figure it’ll make one hell of a tip. I look at myself in the mirror behind the bar and straighten my collar.
Grouchy is right.
I do look like shit.
“Boys,” I say slowly, “it’s time to pay the tab.”
Sol Crystalis Miracalis
Author’s Note: This story is dedicated to the man who saved my brother’s soul. Gordon Miracle was an old-school Army Staff Sergeant who moved on to Elysium fields. Here’s to you, Gordon.
(Originally appeared in Tales of the Talisman (v.8 Issue 1) from Hadrosaur Productions, Nov. 2012.)
Carson Miracle felt his head splitting open when the comm went off. The piercing shriek next to his head was almost enough to make him wish he didn’t love Johnnie Walker scotch as much as he did. He licked dry lips and tried to swallow the dirty cocoon wrapped around his tongue. He failed to dislodge the cocoon, but on his third, fumbling attempt, he pulled his comm out of the stow-sack by his head and inserted it into the jack behind his ear. It linked up with his internal system, and he activated the receiver with a thought.
“What?” Carson’s voice was a surly bag of gravel. The whole crew knew he was off-limits on Saturday mornings after his regularly scheduled Friday-night-benders.
“Miracle, you better get down here,” Jack Hysom whispered. Hysom was one of three freelance diggers on a crew of seventeen men. He was also one of Carson’s oldest friends from back in their Marine days. They’d fought at Mael Duin during the Europa uprising in 2258. “We found something,” Hysom hissed. “I think Coffee’s gonna press this one, and there’s something weird about the chamber. I keep hearing things.”
Five goddamn weeks, Carson thought. The Dragull Corp mining job would last sixteen, and he’d crossed swords with Coffee, the Dragull Crew Chief, at least once a week every week over one “procedural oversight” after another. Carson was fed up with the lying bastard. More cost-cutting bullshit, Coffee? Carson slammed his fist against the gray, polysteel cabin wall. He rubbed blood-shot eyes and tried to swallow the cocoon again, but it clung to his throat as if its life depended upon it.
“Put Redding on it,” Carson grated. “I’m sleeping.” Redding was a competent xenogeologist but a Dragull-man lock, stock, and barrel.
Like clockwork, the freelance diggers came to Carson every few days reporting some new stunt the Crew Chief was trying to pull. Like a good Dragull man, all that interested Coffee was cost-cutting and making bonus for himself and the
Dragull diggers. Every time Carson called him on a regulation or procedure, Coffee would claim he didn’t know, punctuating it with a little smile that really burned Carson’s butt.
“Get off your ass, amigo. Coffee wants to disappear something, and Redding’s buying in.”
“He what?” Carson blurted. He was wide-awake now, and surly had turned into pissed-off. Carson had developed a severe distaste for Coffee on day one. It took all of eight words for Carson to be reminded of every cheesy, two-faced shyster he’d ever seen in Earth-broadcast crime-vids. He always felt like he had to shower after just being in the same room with the Crew Chief, and it didn’t surprise him that Coffee wanted to disappear something.
“Just get down here,” Hysom begged, and then the comm went dead.
Carson thought back to what had landed him on asteroid H5324. It started when a Dragull Mining prospector detected a rich warren of chambers during a run through the Hildas asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Rare mineral signatures were off the chart, so Dragull paid extra for an expedited permit, put together their best crew, and acknowledged the assigned Fed team. Law required that a Federation xenogeologist and at least two freelance miners be present for any private mining of asteroids around Sol. With something this big, the Feds assigned three freelancers to keep Dragull honest.
It was a useful system. Private mining paid for scientific exploration throughout the solar system, and freelancers, who got significantly better pay and bennies than company diggers, were the eyes and ears for Federation xenos. Also, neither xenos nor freelancers made bonuses, so they had no motivation to break the rules. The vast wealth produced by privatized mining of Sol’s asteroids made buy-offs unavoidable; bribes took place to be certain, but penalties were severe, including equipment forfeiture, rescinding of licenses, massive fines, and a mandatory stint in the Pluto penal colony. Every digger knew that if hell truly existed, it called Pluto home.
The crew had landed on H5324, attached the station-module to the surface, and started burrowing. That was five weeks ago. They’d found high concentrations of mostly crystallized rare metals in each of the four chambers they’d exposed, and Dragull categorized H5324 an MVA (Most Valuable Asset). But any new scientific discoveries needed to be reported to the Federation Rep, namely Carson, and doing so usually ceded mining rights back to the Feds. The freelancer system didn’t prevent disappearances; it just reduced the frequency. Carson was old school and both Coffee and Hysom knew it. There’d be no disappearances while Carson drew breath.
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